Category: New Orleans

Summer solstice is coming up, and you know what that means. My band, Half Pagan, will be playing a show on the 21st of June. We’ll take the stage at Banks Street Bar at 7pm sharp. We’ll play a fairly short set, so come early and don’t blink or you’ll miss us entirely. We’ll be […]

I’m super pumped to announce that I’m having my first solo exhibition. Nope, this photo won’t be part of it. It didn’t quite meet my exacting standards of quality. However several other photos from the same site and other locations in Louisiana and Indiana will be featured. Come on down to the Lower Nine and take a gander. […]

Friends, I’ve got a new podcast rolling. Literally. It’s called Editor B’s Morning Ride to Work, and the concept is simple. I record a short segment as I ride my bike to work each morning. Each episode is five minutes or less. Just a little audio window into my world. Subscribe via one of the […]

Nate cometh. I first heard about him as Tropical Depression #16, forming off the coast of Nicaragua on Wednesday. On Thursday morning I saw he had been named and was predicted to be headed straight for New Orleans. I contacted a friend in Memphis about the possibility of bunking there over the weekend. But then […]

There’s a postcard show at Skewer Gallery (located inside Kebab at 2315 St. Claude) which opens this Saturday, 9 September 2017. My daughter and I will have several postcards on display. (Mine all have an autumnal equinox theme.) All postcard art will be on sale for $5 with proceeds going to support L’eau Est La […]

Hey, my name crops up in a new article on CityLab, the noted urban news site from The Atlantic. It’s about the Lafitte Greenway. The corridor carved out by the greenway is almost as old as the city itself. Cutting through the center of the city, it connects Bayou St. John and the Mississippi River. It […]

As I draw on to the end of my fifth decade, I’m feeling reflective. Indulge me in a little reminiscence, and by all means come to my birthday party. What follows is part four in a series; read about my first, second, and third decades on Mid-City Messenger. Stone Cold 97 My fourth decade kicked […]

And so the season of madness begins again. If you want to understand America, study Christmas. If you want to understand New Orleans, study Mardi Gras. Twelfth Night is the intersection of both of these. And tonight is Twelfth Night — if you know how to count like a New Orleanian. Everybody’s heard of the […]

We joke a lot about seasons in New Orleans. A typical formulation: We have two seasons here, summer and Christmas. Another riff recognizes four: Carnival season, festival season, hurricane season, football season. There are many variations. Nevertheless, I’d like to present an attempt to delineate the conventional four seasons according to local parameters. Starting on […]

Tonight is Twelfth Night, if you know how to count like a New Orleanian. Everybody’s heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas, but few people in 21st-century America know that these are the twelve days after Christmas, ending with Epiphany, also known as Little Christmas or Three Kings Day or Twelfthtide. Increasing commercialization puts all […]

I was quoted in this recent article by Robert McLendon: As residents started to trickle back into Mid-City after Hurricane Katrina, people looked at the mess around them and came to a realization: The storm may have been responsible for the wreckage, but the city was broken in many ways long before it made landfall. […]

“The storm didn’t discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort.” As soon as George W. Bush said those words, we knew it was a lie. No, not a lie. Call it wishful thinking. Call it evidence of white privilege. Even the president’s speechwriters seemed to realize this, and a few days later, when he gave […]

The X stands for ten. Yes, it’s been ten years. Rising Tide X takes place on the 29th of August, 2015, the ten-year anniversary of Katrina’s landfall. Rising Tide started on the first anniversary and the conference has convened every year since. Many Katrina anniversary events are commemorative or memorial in nature. They look back. Rising […]

Moving video around the web has gotten a lot easier over the past decade. Studious types may remember that YouTube launched the same year Katrina hit: 2005. In remembrance of the ten year anniversary of these twin catastrophes, I’ve re-upped the three episodes of the ROX “Katrina trilogy” in full quality. There’s really no reason to […]

I know I shouldn’t be excited about something so grim but nevertheless I am happy to announce that Please Forward will soon be available in bookstores (officially on August 15) and is now available for pre-order at all the usual places, including my favorite bookstore. This anthology collects online writings that erupted in the aftermath of […]

Last night we had dinner with an old friend and his new wife. When the topic turned to cycling in New Orleans, she confessed she was fearful for her safety, and she enumerated an appallingly long list of friends and acquaintances who have been severely injured when their bicycles collided with automobiles. This morning a […]

People of New Orleans! In six months we’ll mark the ten year anniversary of the flooding of our city. Already the media machinery is gearing up for all kinds of coverage, and ordinary citizens elsewhere in the country and around the world will be provoked to remember us for a brief moment. They may wonder […]

I am so proud to be named one of the Urban Conservancy‘s 2014 Urban Heroes. What, me a hero? I am not much afflicted with the infamous vice of false modesty, but I have to admit this makes me blush just a little. Yes, the Lafitte Greenway in now under construction, but after all, I […]